The Vocation of Saint Matthew is an oil on canvas painting created in the late 1500s, at the very beginning of the Baroque period, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. He brings this canvas to life with bright colors; bold contrasts of reds, golds and greens and various textures of velvet and soft fur. Caravaggio painted several paintings for this church in Rome, San Luigi dei Francesi. This painting tells the story of Matthew 9:9 in the New Testament, when Matthew became a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus asked Matthew to follow him and he did. Looking at the painting closely, you can see that Jesus was poorly dressed and that Matthew and the people at his table are wearing what appear to be very expensive and colorful clothes. New artistic challenges emerged during the creation of this work. One of the major difficulties of “The Calling of Saint Matthew” was figuring out how to place and dramatize seven individual people. Caravaggio later mastered what became one of his famous hallmarks, the use of chiaroscuro (light and shadow) in both drama and drama. formal effects. This helped unify...